Ok, I haven't updated in a while. My buddy and I bought some defenders 110's and have been fixing those up.
I finally got to work on this last night.
The new engine had a 4L80E on it. Unfortunately I didn't realize the flexplate was different until I had the transmission all bolted up and was trying to hook the torque converter up to it. I had to order a flexplate for a 700R4. That been sitting in the garage for a month now. I decided to finally swap it out last night. It actually didn't go to bad and I had it swapped out and back together in about 3 hours. With some time left in the night, I decided it was time to redo the transmission crossmember I had cobbled together in a hurry when I first did the swap.
I had purchased a cross-member for a chevy truck with a 700R4 about 8 months ago, but they sent me the wrong one. I think they sold me one for a 4x4. They apologized and refunded me my money. I asked how they wanted me to ship it back to them. They said I could just keep it. So its been collecting dust on the shelf for months. Last night I took some measurements, figured out how to shorten it down and make it mount up to my 4x4 700R4.
I just bought a tig welder and decided it was time to practice on something. So after cutting this thing up, I welded it all back together with the tig welder. It went pretty good. I'm starting to get the hang of it. My welds are not the pretty yet. But I can work on that. I know I got good penetration and things are not going to break.
After I finished building that, I went to bed.
This morning I installed it and welded my mounting points into the frame. It fits very well, uses the stock bushings, and has a lot more clearance than the old one. I'll try to post some pictures when I get around to it.
I only have a short list of things left to do:
- Have the rear driveshaft lengthened
- Hook up the transmission wiring
- Figure out the transmission kick down cable / pressure cable (or go full manual conversion, probably going to do this)
- Put the hood on
- Paint the new wheels I got for it